The Dew Action Sports Tour is a $40 million test case in building a large-scale action sports tour, but it’s not the only business test case going on this year in action sports.
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| Dave Mirra has flown higher than other action sports endorsers, getting deals with non-endemic brands. |
In the Dew Tour there’s the case of 21-year-old BMX wunderkind Ryan Guettler and whether he can become the next Dave Mirra, an action athlete who has crossover endorsement success. It’s also worth asking if Mirra can equal the success of skateboarder Tony Hawk when he eventually retires.
The question comes up because Mirra might not be the best BMXer anymore.
The 31-year-old Mirra is a 20-time X Games BMX medalist who has been the best action athlete of the last decade and trails only Hawk in commercial success. Mirra has hosted a non-action show on ESPN, has visited with David Letterman, has national ads for “Got Milk?” and Wendy’s and endorsements with non-endemic brands such as T-Mobile, Slim Jim and Oxy skin-care products. He’s a fixture on MTV, and he’s even had his own charity golf tournament — which is about as un-action as sports get.
The Australian Guettler has positioned himself to win two Dew Cups this year, in BMX dirt and BMX park, while Mirra has an outside chance at one, in BMX vert.
It’s a role reversal for Mirra, who has had a down year by his standards.So both athletes face interesting challenges as the first Dew Tour comes to a close this weekend at the PlayStation Pro in Orlando, the season’s fifth four-day event.
Can Guettler become the next Mirra, whose poster he had on his bedroom wall growing up?
Guettler admits that he naively signed any small deal put in front of him before his recent alignment with The Familie, the large Wasserman Media Group-owned action-sports representation agency.
And he admits that endorsements are “not at all on my mind. I feel like I’m just new to this, and it’s really hard when I get approached by a company because I’d honestly ride for free. But it does help, and it keeps me in America.”
Onlookers say Mirra faces a different type of decision at this point in his career.
“He’s challenged right now, clearly. ‘Where is my heart and what do I want to do here?’ It’s written all over his face,” said Circe Wallace, an influential agent with Octagon Action Sports.
Wallace battles with The Familie for athletes — Octagon pitched Guettler recently — but she’s not the only one who has wondered whether Mirra is past his prime.
Mirra won’t hear of it. “I feel like I’m better — way better — than I was three or four years ago,” he said to SportsBusiness Journal. “A lot of it is there’s more competition out there, and nobody’s going to walk away with it without working hard.”
Mirra’s agent, Steve Astephen of The Familie, said Mirra has three to five years of competing left in him. “And as for retirement, we’ve been preparing for that since we signed him six years ago,” Astephen said.
Regardless, the jury is out on whether Guettler can match the marketing success of Mirra. “One of the challenges is he’s not an American,” Wallace said. “[Mirra] is a good old boy from North Carolina who resonated with good old boys in their own country. [Mirra] is good-looking, he’s well spoken and articulate in the media and he’s parlayed that into entertainment to create more mainstream appeal than a typical action would receive. I don’t look at Guettler as having the potential of a Mirra.”
But Guettler is attractive and articulate, and his work ethic and good nature have won him fans. He also wants to be famous in America, where action athletes are measured. “It’s important for me to be famous in the states,” he said. “As a kid who had Dave Mirra and Ryan Nyquist posters on his wall, it would mean a lot to me to know American kids had my posters on their wall.”
Where consumer brands are concerned, Guettler has deals with Monster energy drink and the shoe and apparel company Vans. He’s had the Vans deal for several years and says he’ll never leave the company. He is also represented by Astephen.
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| Ryan Guettler has positioned himself to follow Mirra atop BMX biking. |
Astephen predicts Guettler’s endorsement income will be in the low- to mid-six figures next year — “20 times what Dave got at that stage in his career. Dave got $2,000 a month from Haro bikes — that’s all he made.”
As Mirra looks at what comes next in his career, even he acknowledges he won’t be the next Hawk. The skateboard star had perfect luck in retiring shortly after he executed a legendary 900-degree trick on the skate vert ramp at the 1999 X Games, and in signing a video game deal for the 1999 release of “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater” from Activision just when action sports was ready for a blockbuster game. Since then the game has provided the majority of his income — estimated at $9 million annually by Forbes — and has given his persona a legendary quality.
Mirra’s situation is summed up implicitly by John Cimperman, president of Cenergy Sports & Entertainment, who consults for Oxy on the Mirra deal, which is close to a three-year extension right now. “We’re investing in Dave as an athlete,” Cimperman said, “and the shows and other things are an added bonus. A prerequisite in any future relationship is that he remain active in competitions.”
Cimperman praises Mirra’s professionalism and ability to relate to corporate benefactors, comparing him and other action athletes to NASCAR drivers, “who know that their sport was born from sponsorships.”
In action, it was endemic deals with bike manufacturers and shoe companies that set the foundation many years ago. But now “corporate companies” — as the athletes call them — are welcomed. Hawk and Mirra helped create this culture. Which is why Guettler now can say of Toyota, sponsor of one leg of the Dew Tour, “Any company that will give $10,000 to renovate old skate parks in their city has my support.” If he thinks he can become the next Dave Mirra, he’s saying the right things.
